Standing up on the crater lip, about four to five thousand feet above the hot, sulfurous lake, I was trying to catch as many pictures as I could. The wind was howling around me.

What struck me as odd was a loud hissing noise I could hear. My first reaction was that it was the sound of wind splitting thru some cracks in the mountains creating a corridor effect. But the hissing part did not match with the howling or whistling that I would expect.

I explained my perplexity to Gabriel. He solved it for me.

Way down below – see if you can see the marked red areas – the pictures do not do justice to what the eyes could see – you can see steaming hot sulfurous vapors escaping from a gap in the wall just above the water level. That is the raw heat and furor from the lava layer escaping into the free air!!!

Impressive to even realize the scale!!

I am on top of the highest point in El Salvador!! You can see the crater lake behind me!!!

I would have jumped up for joy if not for the fact that any jumping up would be a 50-50 toss up between hurling myself down a steep four to five thousand feet of cliff side into a smoldering sulfurous water body or rolling down nearly seven thousand of mountain side bouncing off trees till I drowned in the cold lake.

Opted for a demeanor with far more gravitas.

Internally, I was gyrating between – “I can’t believe I made it” and “How the hell am I going to go down without seriously damaging my knees?”

It was an incredible sight though. And I mean every bit of it.

Took it in as long as I could.

I was only ten minutes away from dragging myself to the top. The winds had picked up. I had put my jacket on. The slope had eased up. I was fairly sure I would make it.

But looking back, I saw what I had to come up. You can probably see the folks trying to clamber up. That sight gave me the necessary fillip – if I could do that, the rest was going to be fairly easy.

By now, the rocks had started flattening out. I could see the rim… and the small silhouettes of people on the top. Could not be more than ten minutes more at that point of time. But at that point of time even one minute felt like a month.

I think the congratulatory board was strategically placed there just for me. For some reason, I thought I was already there.

I was not. But it did not matter. The board told me I was there. The rest was about just taking some nice pictures, right?

The last 30 minutes have been incredibly tough for me. The trail simply lost itself and asked to stay close to the rocks with yellow markers. Gabriel was jumping on the rock juttings like a mountain goat. Forget my physical strength. My fear of heights took over. This meant, I had to stay out of the edge of the rocks and stay inside a bit. Which had a lot more pebbles. Which meant I had to be wary of slipping. It did not help that I did slip a couple of times. Plus, I could not look to my right. Acrophobia would freeze me immediately.

Every ten minutes, I stopped and sat down on a rock. Slowly, I would open my eyes and look down to acclimatize myself. And then after a few minutes, I would slowly stand up and stand still. (Quickly getting up would invariably give me the dizziness).

Gabriel, who I suspect realized that I was running on fumes, volunteered to take a picture of me.

Also known as excuse #2. I had to stop to take some more breath. This peak is between Izalco and Ilamtepec. Cerro, I suspect, as the same root has “Sierra” – mountains. Verde is clearly green. The entire mountain looks green from top to bottom!

Also known as “another excuse from Rajib to take a break”, Volcano Izalco (the left most mountain you would have seen in “We are on the road again”) is the steepest one and is an active volcano. There are folks who have died trying to scale that. We can safely knock my name off folks who might try that in the future. At this moment, I just want Gabriel to think that I am taken in by the beauty – not that I HAD to catch my breath!!

The mouth of the crater is very clearly visible from this height.

The only thing I understood in that danged board is that I have one more hour to go. I wish I did not understand a single word of Spanish. This is going to be interesting today. We are still below the tree line. So, at least it is cool.

Ran out of breath enough to stop and look back and see Lago de Coatepeque again. Still very serene. Except from this height, I can see the layers of mountains behind.

It is 4 minutes to noon. Why is the moon up now? I think everybody wants to see how this 56 year old loses his breath trying to climb a 7,812 feet volcano.